The new Mandriva 2010.0 has been ready for download since yesterday. After a month's delay, the French distributor has released the current version, code-named Adelie, for free. Some important changes were made.

Most of the changes to the Mandriva release are on the project wiki. Immediately noticeable are the visuals: it now uses Plymouth software for bootsplash. The wallpaper designs were created as the result of a competition. Mandriva 2010.0 boots markedly faster and integrates a complete Moblin environment so that it can run well on netbooks. It also includes Sugar, the desktop created for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program. Users surf using Firefox 3.5 and create text and calculations with OpenOffice.org 3.1.1. Mandriva is based on X.org 7.4 and the Intel graphics chips should perform better thanks to DRI2 and UXA architecture.

The desktop environments are KDE 4.3 and GNOME 2.28. Data can migrate from KDE 3 to KDE 4 and integration with the Nepomuk semantic desktop was taken a step further. Activities can be tied to virtual desktops. KDE 4.3 includes Amarok 2.2, Digikam 1.0 beta5 and Skrooge, which replaces (and can import data from) the unstable Kmymoney2. Phonon integration with PulseAudio is also now tighter.

The GNOME environment now allows webcam sessions and live streaming. Tomboy notes are also synchronizable with the Snowy web service. The Pitivi video editor was updated to 0.13.0, and Empathy replaces Pidgin as the default and supports audio-visual chats.

The Elisa multimedia center was renamed Moovida and "includes a brand new graphical user interface." Other changes include the Phoronix test suite with which users can benchmark their Linux system. Guest systems run best on the Mandriva-supported Virtual Box 3.0.8, which also supports OpenGL. The included Wine 1.1.32 Windows runtime environment has performance improvements and better DirectX 10 support. Developers also improved Bluetooth device support and the GNOME power manager now services laptops with multiple batteries.

Mandriva downloads are installable as 32-bit and 64-bit versions from DVD. A dual-arch CD contains a minimal system installable over the web, while the One edition is a LiveCD with KDE or GNOME as the desktop.

Mandriva Linux 2010 is set to appear on the scene with an alpha version in October. First attempts with the free version (in 32- and 64-bit) have been approved. In the meantime the French company has let its community down by cancelling the LinuxTag visit last minute.

Comments

Lovin' 2010.0

Alan

I've been using Mandriva 2010.0 for that couple of days (using 2009.1 before that) and I'm very impressed. Mandriva has my vote as the best Linux distro for those people who like things to "just work."